I’ve always felt that way and have been holding strong against the shortcode fury. I don’t include any shortcodes through the theme itself, though I do have a UI plugin and a social plugin (both external) – which generate shortcodes (basic elements/social icons).

From my point of view, the reason the majority of themes in today’s market utilize shortcode “builders” and the like is simply because of today’s market. Themes tagged with “layout composer”, “unlimited page builder” and such have been selling because the perceived value of those themes is much higher than others. Unfortunately from a ok developer at least, I feel that these types of themes cause far too many problem, leading to more unhappy customers & more support requests – a loss in both ways.

Templates aren’t difficult to make, theme types of themes are built with the “do what you want” mantra – but lack the intuitive & simple implementation that can be achieved by more “focused” themes.

All in all… Page-builder-esque themes tend to do well > Developers will keep making them > Maybe (hopefully, but not likely) this trend will end.

Svipic said
Couldn’t Have Said It Better.
Looking forward to your themes in my next projects!

wopethemes said
The funny is there are alot of great sale items (>1k , >5k LOL) just use shortcodes for layout , for widgets for everything in a custom page , home page.

As a coder , I’m still feel hard to edit shortcodes to create a full pages. How other buyers without no coding-skills can edit them?

In my all themes , we never let buyer use shortcode to build complex things. The shortcodes are very limited and very simple just like a button or a social icons. All widgets,layout need to be built via page builder which very easy and everyone can do it.

However themeforest only encourage better design , not better functions. Because the better design will give better sale. But when buyer are using a poor functions , all shortcodes theme, they will cry alone =))

I think TF should thinking more about the functions , please take care more user experience than the design.

Agree with you! time for self promote here. You can check my works. I’ve more than the current themes

Just kidding , back to topic. I’m very experience developer. I built my page builder in some weeks. But when I came to this market. The design is all the things reviewer and buyer care here. So I don’t have time to do better functions , alway stuck with design and design.

All caused by market direction. Can the buyer know the functions,user experience with use theme by only see the frontend?

I see alot of buyers complain that they bought alot of themes ( I guess almost theme are top themes and have shortcodes , broken ) but they can use very little.

If market encourage more about the functions , then the buyer experience will be increase , the buyers will get more profit.

Svipic said
Couldn’t Have Said It Better.
Looking forward to your themes in my next projects!

wopethemes said
The funny is there are alot of great sale items (>1k , >5k LOL) just use shortcodes for layout , for widgets for everything in a custom page , home page.

As a coder , I’m still feel hard to edit shortcodes to create a full pages. How other buyers without no coding-skills can edit them?

In my all themes , we never let buyer use shortcode to build complex things. The shortcodes are very limited and very simple just like a button or a social icons. All widgets,layout need to be built via page builder which very easy and everyone can do it.

However themeforest only encourage better design , not better functions. Because the better design will give better sale. But when buyer are using a poor functions , all shortcodes theme, they will cry alone =))

I think TF should thinking more about the functions , please take care more user experience than the design.

Seriously? Tell me more how the page builders are better than the shortcodes? Most of them create MUCH more mess especially in the database. Take one of the very best selling composer plugin, create a page using the builder and then see the meta data for that post.

Svipic said
Couldn’t Have Said It Better.
Looking forward to your themes in my next projects!

wopethemes said
The funny is there are alot of great sale items (>1k , >5k LOL) just use shortcodes for layout , for widgets for everything in a custom page , home page.

As a coder , I’m still feel hard to edit shortcodes to create a full pages. How other buyers without no coding-skills can edit them?

In my all themes , we never let buyer use shortcode to build complex things. The shortcodes are very limited and very simple just like a button or a social icons. All widgets,layout need to be built via page builder which very easy and everyone can do it.

However themeforest only encourage better design , not better functions. Because the better design will give better sale. But when buyer are using a poor functions , all shortcodes theme, they will cry alone =))

I think TF should thinking more about the functions , please take care more user experience than the design.

Seriously? Tell me more how the page builders are better than the shortcodes? Most of them create MUCH more mess especially in the database. Take one of the very best selling composer plugin, create a page using the builder and then see the meta data for that post.

Total seriously! You think “adding post meta fields for 10+ custom page” is a big problem?

So wordpress saved visions of posts could be a big big big problem. It save not just 1 vision for each post.

I’m not sure about how top selling composer plugin work but my page builder only save a long array into 1 meta post only. Does it very big problem?

So I have 1 extra post meta per 1 custom page. Can you create 1000+ custom page per website?

Did you ever try to deactivate a theme using shortcodes? See a lot of “[” and “]” everywhere in your site? :))))

Shortcodes are very useful for creating complicated elements and objects in a post or page. If you have a visual shortcode generator to let users add them without coding them, it’s even better.

By the way, I agree with @crossroad. Page builders and Shortcodes are very similar. If you don’t like shortcodes you probably don’t like page builders as well.

And of course I agree with @Svipic that using pure shortcodes to create the layout is not a good way. But if you want beautiful elements inside your theme (as you can see them in most multi-purpose or business themes) you should use shortcodes.

For a magazine, blog or portfolio theme, over using shortcodes will just confuse clients. I guess it’s better to change the thread title to “ShortCode[ing] Hell in Creating Page Layouts” They are useful but we should use them when we need them.

I think my last two themes had 2 shortcodes. One was specific to generating blog/portfolio post lists and that’s something I’ll never take out.

I got tired of dealing with shortcodes so I switched to including Visual Composer in my themes to provide this functionality for any customers that choose to use it. I just make sure the styling of the components matches the theme.

Parallelus said
I think my last two themes had 2 shortcodes. One was specific to generating blog/portfolio post lists and that’s something I’ll never take out.
I got tired of dealing with shortcodes so I switched to including Visual Composer in my themes to provide this functionality for any customers that choose to use it. I just make sure the styling of the components matches the theme.

Hey Parallelus,

I believe that you are doing the right thing. The thing is VC is generating shortcodes for every element which is added to the page but with a cool interface which will not make users confused. And I like it

Sure, the shortcodes should not be added in the theme, they should be used via plugins, but should the page builders be in the theme?
My opinion is that if the shortcodes are bad, the page builders are not any better.

Its a good point.
I think that page builders must be a separate from a theme and should be used via plugins and not forcing a user to use it for layout purpose of the theme.

using pure shortcodes to create the layout is not a good way.

@imangm shortcodes as itself is great solution and there is good practice like in Contact form 7 plugin. But i can’t agree with you with :

if you want beautiful elements inside your theme you should use shortcodes

No you don’t. beautiful elements can be added as widgets, as an metabox options, in css, js or as separate options. Its not like “if you don’t use shortcode, you can’t use beautiful elements”. Ofcourse you can. It all depends on a theme and on a developer.

All you can see in this theme is not actually a template based but for most as 98% of all this beautiful elements and layout you see in a demo on all PAGES is a full of mess in WP Editor with shortcodes. FULL OF MESS

I was so disappointed to figure it out. How the hell end user can use it? I as a developer and a blogger get hard times to use it. Its all based on shortcodes.

So actually i as a customer got not a template but Header + Footer and tons of shortcode to deal with it. Its not a template for me.
Thats definitely not why i am buying themes here.

If all i buy is a header and footer, i will not invest my money in here anymore.
Thats why i put this subject up

Svipic said
beautiful elements can be added as widgets, as an metabox options, in css, js or as separate options. Its not like “if you don’t use shortcode, you can’t use beautiful elements”. Ofcourse you can. It all depends on a theme and on a developer.

But what’s the difference between widget and shortcodes if you be able to use shortcodes with a page builder that is even easier than using widgets and of course more flexible than widgets in sidebars? As I said before, I agree with you that shortcoding is not a good thing to do for users. But using shortcodes via an interface is just making simple users more powerful on creating complicated elements on their sites.

May be we are talking the same. I don’t like a page full of shortcodes that I can’t understand the page layout but using shortcodes in a graphical user interface is definitely a great tool for users.

Svipic said
If all i buy is a header and footer, i will not invest my money in here anymore.

There are different themes built by different authors that even think completely different here. So if you don’t like shortcodes, and I’m an author who believes in using shortcodes in my items, then you can simply ignore my items when you are deciding to purchase an item here (Of course you don’t need to know me. Just take a look at my item’s description page or demo). But surely you can find several great beautiful themes that are not using shortcodes and page builders which you can choose them for your project.

We (authors) are not same here and this is the power of ThemeForest. You have always another choice but to leave here

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